| Letters to the Editor
Phallic inspiration or not, I often admire the esthetics of well-designed tall buildings and even understand some of the benefits of denser land use. However, I seem to have missed one obvious question in these several years of passionate debate about downtown Berkeley height limits: How are persons rescued from “16-story point towers" in case of earthquake or fire? Gerta Farber • NATURE OF DEATH Editors, Daily Planet: In his thoughtful “Sonata on Important Things" (Nov. 2) Marvin Chachere offers a formulation, for himself and for the rest of us, on the nature of death. It invites contemplation and, perhaps, some further assessment. He first relates an assertion by Professor George Wald that “death does not exist in the non-human world and must therefore have meaning only among humans." While this seems generally true, there is convincing evidence that elephants and the gorilla Koko have shown clear awareness of death as well as empathy for the dead, if not actual mourning.
Schools, communities can work together to tighten anti-smoking rules, seminar told
Spare the rod, spoil the smoker was the message conveyed at a tobacco control seminar at UPEI on Wednesday. The presentation, which highlighted smoking patterns among youth, zeroed in on backing anti-smoking policies in schools with enforcement. Donna Murnaghan, associate professor at UPEI’s school of nursing, along with Chris Lovato, associate professor of health care at the University of British Columbia, spoke before UPEI faculty as well as students and community members on ways to keep the number of young smokers on the decline. Murnaghan said studies have shown that schools with stricter smoking policies, backed with action from teachers and the community, have a lower rate of student smokers. She said policy is not enough. "This is not a school problem," she said. "This is a community problem." Murnaghan added that banning on-campus smoking only forces smokers to move off the property to smoke, which doesn’t solve anything.
Calling in sick when nothing hurts
Most of us have called in sick, sometimes even when we feel fine. But have you ever gone through the trouble of typing up, printing up and handing your boss a phony doctor's note?KOMO 4 News conducted a few experiments to find out what it takes to sell a fake sickness to the boss.First we bought several phony excuses from the Web site phoneyexcuses.com, which specializes in just that. Then, with the help of three employees of Jones Soda, we sent in our hidden cameras to see whether their bosses bought the phony excuses. Our first accomplice handed over a phony doctor's note for a future medical visit. And we mean business when we say "phony." The list of doctors on the slip was actually the list of the cast members from the ABC show "Grey's Anatomy." And the address of the phony doctor's office was that of the Space Needle.
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